NASCAR working on some new ideas for 2014, asking for drivers to offer opinions. No fines expected.....but maybe slower speeds

MARTINSVILLE, Va.
#ThingsDaleEarnhardtNeverSaid:
"Gee, Richard, I don't want to take my Talladega car out for practice. I might dent the fenders."
That was the excuse so many drivers gave last weekend for sitting out most of Friday's practice sessions. Afraid to ding up their pretty cars.
Aerodynamics can be finicky, yes, and a banged up fender may require some work.
But, heck, this isn't golf or tennis, this is stock car racing. The late Earnhardt would use those Talladega-Daytona practice sessions to do his best to put the 'fear of Earnhardt' into his rivals, with ruthlessly aggressive runs that had car owner Richard Childress cringing atop the hauler.
Mesmerizing to watch.
Last weekend at Talladega there was probably better action out on I-20, across the campgrounds most of the time.
And these guys are earning millions of dollars a year. One NASCAR driver even just sold a New York City condo for $25 million (as bad as that might be 'optically' for this sport's many, struggling blue-collar fans).
Someone might want to ask 'Where's the beef?'

Whether or not it was that no-practice Friday at Talladega, but Sunday's Talladega 500 finish didn't earn much praise.
Maybe Sunday's curious finish to Round Seven of NASCAR's championship chase ought to be chalked up to 'it's just Talladega.' However, it was somewhat less than satisfying to some, that single-file ride to the finish.
A replay of the Daytona 500 eight months ago.
Jimmie Johnson, who won both Daytona's this season and who had the fastest car at Talladega but struggled in 13th, said he's still surprised at how the Talladega 500 played out.
"Any team member or driver I've seen this week, they all ask the same question: 'Why wasn't everybody racing?'
"I don't know.
"We had more side-by-side action on lap one, lap 100 on, than we did in the last few laps.
"I think everybody, especially in the first five to 10 positions, was waiting for their opportunity....waiting for someone to pull out... and in anticipation.
"No one made a move. I can't quite explain it. I'm a little puzzled by it as well.
"It falls within that 'strategy' mindset. Guys were trying to get their best finish.
"At Daytona you might make a run down the backstretch (the last lap).
"At Talladega the finish line is out of the tri-oval a lot further away (down in turn one).....so if we made it to turn three and turn four, there would have been a lot going on at that point.
"But we crashed (Austin Dillon and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.) down the back and didn't get that chance.
"For my sake, I wish we would have started racing earlier. I tried a couple of times to get the bottom line going, and nobody wanted to.
"But then this weekend it's a short track so all the cautious driving is going to go out the window."
But Talladega with virtually no action late? Talladega closing out with nearly 300 miles of green flag racing?

Jamie McMurray riding the high line to victory, his first in three years, was fun to watch. But after Saturday's Talladega Truck race, with its three-wide racing, Sunday's 500 was, well, uneventful.
So, okay, riddle me this -- Saturday's truck race here was thrilling, almost a three-wide finish, two car drafting worked great. Heck, even Saturday night's Indycar race at California's AutoClub Speedway, on those 14-degree banks, was thrilling.
Sunday......

Now it looks like some changes are in the wind.
-- NASCAR executives, maybe after noticing dwindling crowds in the grandstands, particularly on qualifying Fridays, are suddenly interested in trying something new for qualifying next season, something other than the deathly boring single-lap runs that have turned qual days at the track into meaningless, fan-less episodes.
Nowhere is that more vividly evident than qualifying at Daytona in February, where some Sundays the huge track can seem virtually deserted....with nearby DisneyWorld an enticing alternative.

"You want to see something exciting -- give us an hour on a superspeedway and tell us to run the fastest lap we can," Denny Hamlin said. "That would be fun."

-- Engine builders say they now expect NASCAR finally to try to cut speeds in 2014, after record runs nearly everywhere this season with these new 2013s. One top engine man says NASCAR could try to cut engines by nearly 100 horsepower. But it's not clear exactly how that might play out on the track itself.

-- And out here in the NASCAR garage, Brad Daugherty's long-time Toyota team, which has Bobby Labonte at the wheel this year and will have AJ Allmendinger next season, may be changing to Chevrolets for 2014.
If the Bobby Hutchens' run team does make the move, it will almost certainly become a satellite of the Richard Childress operation.

What NASCAR might actually do for qualifying in 2014 isn't clear. Some ideas are just being thrown around...pretty much like ideas for sprucing up the Sprint Cup schedule were tossed around for consideration while NBC was in line to take over next season.
One interesting suggestion: that NASCAR look to the Formula 1 'knockout' style of mass qualifying. That would require drivers to get out on the track and post fast practice times, during, say, a 30-minute or 60-minute session. Add a second session and 'knockout' the guys not that fast in the first session, for example. Anything like that would seem preferable to what this sport has now.

Nascar needs to break the races into 3 segments.a 400 lap race should be more exciting.
the first should be 200 laps with a 3 points being given to the winner of the first 200 laps.
the second segment gets 2 points with a regular points payout at the races conclusion and 3rd segment.
One point should be given to the pole winner also.win 3 straight poles and receive a 5 point bonus and that should add to .
Car wise put the factory front ends back on the cars with the factory grills and head light buckets like the 83 t birds and monte Carlos had to break up the air. no need for roof wickers or slotted bumpers.Take the side skirts off. petty and Pearson dident need them or a bill board sized spoiler.
No team should have more then 2 cars and no mystery owners .
If NASCAR will do the above fans will come back . they are tired of the hms foush and jg and rcr racing series

"Why wasn't anybody racing?" Because the Chase has taken all the life out of the sport - no one wants to buck the points-racing trend.

The irony is this Talladega race was still superior to almost anything else seen on the Cup tour this year - 52 lead changes is nothing to sneeze at.

But the points racing mentality is a huge percentage of the problem in the sport, and switching to a "heat race" style qualifying session every week is not the answer. F1-style qualifying is unwatchable because it's pretending to be a race when it's not, and NASCAR needs to face that the concept of qualifying simply can't be made exciting - qualifying is supposed to determine where (NOT whether) you start; nothing else.

What needs to change attitudinally is that the racers need to have no option but to go for the lead, regardless of what the lap is. This requires a fundamental change in the points system - elimination of the Chase format, reversion to the Latford Point System, and front-loading of large point bonuses for the race win and for most laps led.

On the racecars, the comparison with the amazing Truck 250 showcases NASCAR's myopia with competition rules. The Trucks were able to tandem draft and thus take the lead from 20th spot in one straightaway; they were also able to sidedraft and thus break up tandems to where they didn't just run off and stay there. The result was classic racing.

Reducing horsepower is a start for next year. Other changes along the lines of the larger spoiler and reversion to the roof blade are also needed - make the draft more important than handling again.

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While F1's knockout qualifying is some of the most interesting things in the world of motorsports, it won't work in Nascar. At least not in the current configuration.
It works in F1 because the cars are close enough enough and races short enough that where you start makes a difference. No pit stops or full course cautions to bunch up the field. Unless those things are implemented in Nascar it would just be a joke.P